A new initiative bringing together the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, Lo Tishkach and the VAAD of Ukraine will link up work between the three groups and share vital information on Jewish heritage in the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Data and thousands of photographs from surveys undertaken by Lo Tishkach in Ukraine over the past three years will be uploaded to a new Russian-language database while the EAJC and the VAAD will begin surveying the vast western regions of Lviv and Volyn this year with data and photographs from these projects processed by Lo Tishkach.
Together with similar surveys scheduled for this year in Transcarpathia and Poltava, it is likely that data will already be published on close to 1,500 sites by the end of 2012 in both English and Russian.
Lo Tishkach Executive Director, Philip Carmel, described the initiative as “both historic and urgent.”
“We are in a race against time to get all this data in before the effects of economic regeneration of these areas wipe out centuries of Jewish history,” Carmel said. “The direct memories of the pre-Holocaust period are also sadly disappearing. We need to get this information on-line and available to a vast public as soon as possible.”
Lo Tishkach has long been involved in survey work with the VAAD-supported Centre for Jewish Education in Ukraine. Since 2009, the CJEU has surveyed Kiev, Cherkasy and Zakarpattia oblasts as well as acting as a vital research and training resource for similar LT projects in Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Chernihiv Oblasts and in the Baltic States.
Lo Tishkach is delighted that through the support of the EAJC, its president, Vadim Shulman and its Council Chair, Josef Zissels, we are now able to expand this work into the areas of historically very large Jewish populations in Western Ukraine.
